How to Grow on Social Media by Sharing Stop Motion Videos with Alisha Cohen

So I'm curious to know. You've talked about stop motion a couple times. What is it when. How are brands using that and what does that look like in terms of a type of media that people could consider, creators could consider? Is that something that you see? Uh, like so for this podcast would be food creators. Maybe they have a following on TikTok or Instagram following on their blog. What does stop motion look like? Or is it more brands like Land O' Lakes wants to do a kind of cool butter thing of like the butter melting on a. On a piece of toast or something?

Yeah.

How do you see those being successful?

So I think both creators and brands can utilize stop motion. Especially now that Instagram has told us that, you know, we are no longer a photo sharing app. Right. We want you to share videos. So it's a lot of brands and creators are using it on their feed instead of a static image. And some of these, like, it would be more considered like a gif. Right. So it's only a couple frames. But just that little bit of motion can really make a difference and get you higher engagement. So brands are using them in ads mostly. Like instead of still image ads, they're using stop motion. And like a recipe blogger, there's so many opportunities to do stop motion when it comes to food and recipes. You could show yourself adding all the ingredients to the bowl, the bowl mixing, like snapping your fingers and the cake being made, you know, so there's a lot of opportunities there. So not only is it just like standalone videos in the feed, but I see stop motion being utilized in reels and TikTok all lot. And it's not necessarily like the whole reel is a stop motion, but maybe just that part at the end, like I said, like the snapping part is maybe the stop motion element. And now like Instagram and TikTok. TikTok are making it so easy to just do that on your phone.

Yeah.

So that's something that is definitely more accessible now with these apps.

Can you talk about that? When you say it's easier to do it on your phone, how do you actually do that? Somebody's like, I want to create, create that on my own. It's just me. They're not going to be able to hire somebody. How people know how to do a photo edit in Lightroom, you know how to do a video edit, an imovie. Where do you do stop motion?

So stop motion on an app, there's an app called Life Lapse app and it helps you kind of put those still frames Together. But the important things that you need to have, and this goes for on your camera or on your phone. And you need to have your camera or phone on a tripod so that it's not absolutely not moving. So they make tripods for phones. They also make those little like clamp arms, I don't know if you've seen those, that you can, that hold the phone. And then you need a way to trigger your, your phone without touching it. So there's like little remote shutter buttons that you can buy for like $8 on Amazon that you click that button instead of touching your phone. Because when you're touching your phone, you may move the phone and we don't want that. And then thing it goes back to lighting, actually. You need consistent lighting or else you're going to get that weird flicker effect. So we talked about natural light. It is really hard to do with a stop motion unless you have like a super clear day without any clouds. And it's. You're doing it fast so it's not really moving in the sky. So your best bet is going to be some kind of artificial lighting. There are some continuous lights that I recommend, like an led. Godox has an LED that's pretty reasonable, reasonably priced, and that's going to give you a lot more power than like a ring light. I mean you could use something like a cheap ring light if it's something fast, maybe for a real or something like that. Something small rather. But I definitely recommend more of like a continuous LED for that type of content.

Got it. I know a lot of people are interested in improving their photography. You talked about how important it is to learn along the way. You actually have a course. We're going to talk about your kind of the business side. But before we get too far away from photography, you have a course that covers a lot of this stuff and the best practices that you've learned. Great name for it as well. I'll let you talk about that if people want to dig deeper into that. Can you talk about where that is and where they can find it?

Yeah, you can find it@lishcreative.com course. The course is called Slay the Flat Way. So a little play on words there. And it is basically everything I've ever learned about photography, styling and stop motion. And then there also is a course within it that helps you take better social videos. So it's going to cover everything on the camera and then also how to take better videos on your phone, how to edit them and post them on reels and that kind of thing. And then it includes a nine page gear guide with the exact links to all these products that I've been mentioning. And also gives you like a range, like low end, middle and high end for a lot of those things as well.

Awesome, that's great. We'll be sure to link to that as well. For anybody who's interested in the education piece, want to make sure they check out the course. There's also folks who listen to the podcast who are brands, you know, more product oriented and then also just creators who might need help. For Lish, how much of that is brand work versus a blogger who wants to have somebody help with photography? Is it all of the above? Like if you were to say your focus, you talk about, you know, producing the content that you are is similar to the brands that you want to work with or the content that you want to be doing, what would that in case people want to reach out and connect with you?

Yeah, I would say like our specialty is food, beverage, lifestyle and beauty brands. And so that's mainly who we're working with to produce photography, stop motions and short form videos. So that would be like TikToks and reels, even some YouTube videos here and there. That's really kind of our bread and butter. Lots of social ads and most of these brands are very colorful, feminine brands. Like I said, there are some exceptions, but for the most part, a focus on color is a big thing.

Yeah, that's awesome. You won't be doing a photo shoot for Kiss the band. Probably you could, you could pull it off, but that wouldn't necessarily be in the focus category for you.

Yeah, right.

So for folks who want to follow along with what you're up to, obviously TikTok and Instagram, Instagram would be great places. You can plug those and then the best place, if anybody does want to work with you on the agency side, how can they get in touch with you?

Yeah, you can email hello, creative.com you can learn more@lishCreative.com Lish Creative on TikTok and Alicia, Lishy and Lish Creative on Instagram. There's a personal and a company one on Instagram.

Awesome. We'll link to those. Alicia, thanks so much for coming on the podcast.

Thanks so much for having me.